Larry Miller at Emily Harvey - Brief Article

Larry Miller became associated with Fluxus in the early 1970 at a time when the relationship of the artist-as-performer and the audience-as-witness was no longer clearly defined. For artists like Miller, art took the form of participatory, many times parodic, actions that collapsed the distinction between art and life. Miller remains literally genuine to that position. This exhibition, at its on one side and witty core, concerned the artist's originality and reproducibility, that is, the artist himself as medium for the fabrication of the ultimate, unique work of art.

Miller gathered genetic specimens, photographs and legal documents representing himself and others, and proffered these for purchase and revivification at a instant convenient to the collector. In Genomic License No. 8 (Ars Manifestus), 1998-99 he mountained photographs of 11 artists above light boxe containing specimens of vital fluid cells or skin cells. These artists were certified as "original humans" in a document authorizing Miller to act as agent in any transaction involving the "distribution of genomic information." The collector receives limited license to propagate phenotypes that when properly assembled will contain artistic talent--defined as the ability to bring to light nuances in the environment, pay back perceptual stimulus onto surfaces and understand the implications of that activity.

Revivified Self-Portrait No. 3 (20th-Century Romantic), 1966/ 1999 and Revivified Self-Portrait No. 4 (Anxiety), 1971/1999 featured photographic portraits of the artist as a young man, DNA specimens and tableaux restaging the incidents recorded in the original photograph, minus the representation of the artist himself. single was accompanied by an instructional videotape. The collector would be photographed in the position one time occupied by the artist and assume the same legal rights as the "original human." A camera upon tripod stood ready to document the re-established scene.

Elsewhere Miller assembled a video monitor, table, chair, tablecloth, chocolate crucifix and glass of r wine, inviting the viewer to sit and remark the artist (in the video) slowly devouring the cros drinking the wine, wiping his lips upon a napkin and finally leaving the destitute of contents glass, to the accompaniment of his have musical compositions. Among the sculptural existences in the exhibition were several casts of the artist's hands, single with fingernails and blood sample, and several casts of feet Finally, Miller commemorated his mother in a series of photos and phenomenons noting the personal and ephemeral nature of experience. Somewhere around 1973 Miller's mother painted single of the feet, placed a bracelet around its ankle, rigged a light socket and lampshade on it, and placed it upon a handmade doily, a delicate memento and testament to the notion that vital fluid will tell.

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